it to be a copy, if I had ever seen, even in his most genuine works, an
extreme distance of Claude with any of the essential characters of
nature. But although in his better pictures we have always beautiful
drawing of the _air_, which in the copy before us is entirely wanting,
the real features of the extreme mountain distance are equally neglected
or maligned in all. There is, indeed, air between us and it; but ten
miles, not seventy miles, of space. Let us observe a little more closely
the practice of nature in such cases.
Sec. 12. Farther illustration of the distant character of mountain chains.
Sec. 13. Their excessive appearance of transparency.
The multiplicity of form which I have shown to be necessary in the
outline, is not less felt in the body of the mass. For, in all extensive
hill ranges, there are five or six lateral chains separated by deep
valleys, which rise between the spectator and the central ridge, showing
their tops one over another, wave beyond wave, until the eye is carried
back to the faintest and highest forms of the principal chain. These
successive ridges, and I speak now not merely of the Alps, but of
mountains generally, even as low as 3000 feet above the sea, show
themselves in extreme distance merely as vertical shades, with very
sharp outlines, detached from one another by greater intensity,
according to their nearness. It is with the utmost difficulty that the
eye can discern any solidity or roundness in them; the lights and shades
of solid form are both equally lost in the blue of the atmosphere, and
the mountain tells only as a flat, sharp-edged film, of which multitudes
intersect and overtop one another, separated by the greater faintness of
the retiring masses. This is the most simple and easily imitated
arrangement possible, and yet, both in nature and art, it expresses
distance and size in a way otherwise quite unattainable. For thus, the
whole mass of one mountain being of one shade only, the smallest
possible difference in shade will serve completely to detach it from
another, and thus ten or twelve distances may be made evident, when the
darkest and nearest is an aerial gray as faint as the sky; and the
beauty of such arrangements carried out as nature carries them, to their
highest degree, is, perhaps, the most striking feature connected with
hill scenery: you will never, by any chance, perceive in extreme
distance, anything like solid form or projection of the hills. Each is a
dead, flat, perpendicular film or shade, with a sharp edge darkest at
the summit, and lost as it descends, and about equally dark whether
turned towards the light or from it; and of these successive films of
mountain you will probably have half a dozen, one behind another, all
showing with perfect clearness their every chasm and peak in the
outline, and not one of them showing the slightest vestige of solidity,
but on the contrary, looking so thoroughly transparent, that if it so
happens, as I have seen frequently, that a conical near hill meets with
its summit the separation of two distant ones, so that the right-hand
slope of the nearer hill forms an apparent continuation of the
right-hand slope of the left-hand farther hill, and _vice versa_, it is
impossible to get rid of the impression that one or the more distant
peaks is seen _through_ the other.
Sec. 14. Illustrated from the works of Turner and Stanfield. The Borromean
Islands of the latter.
I may point out in illustration of these facts, the engravings of two
drawings of precisely the same chain of distant hills,--Stanfield's
Borromean Islands, with the St. Gothard in the distance, and Turner's
Arona, also with the St. Gothard in the distance. Far be it from me to
indicate the former of these plates as in any way exemplifying the power
of Stanfield, or affecting his reputation; it is an unlucky drawing,
murdered by the engraver, and as far from being characteristic of
Stanfield as it is from being like nature, but it is just what I want,
to illustrate the particular error of which I speak; and I prefer
showing this error where it accidentally exists in the works of a really
great artist, standing there alone, to point it out where it is confused
with other faults and falsehoods in the works of inferior hands. The
former of these plates is an example of everything which a hill distance
is not, and the latter of everything which it is. In the former, we have
the mountains covered with patchy lights, which being of equal intensity
whether near or distant, confuse all the distances together; while the
eye, perceiving that the light falls so as to give details of solid
form, yet finding nothing but insipid and formless spaces displayed by
it, is compelled to suppose that the whole body of the hill is equally
monotonous and devoid of character; and the effect upon it is not one
whit more impressive and agreeable than might be received from a group
of sand-heaps, washed into uniformity by recent rain.
Sec. 15. Turner's Arona.
Compare with this the distance of Turner in Arona. It is totally
impossible here to say which way the light falls on the distant hills,
except by the slightly increased decision of their edges turned towards
it, but the greatest attention is paid to get these edges decisive, yet
full of gradation, and perfectly true in character of form. All the rest
of the mountain is then indistinguishable haze, and by the bringing of
these edges more and more decisively over one another, Turner has given
us between the right-hand side of the picture and the snow, fifteen
distinct distances, yet every one of these distances in itself
palpitating, changeful, and suggesting subdivision into countless
multitude. Something of this is traceable even in the engraving, and all
the essential characters are perfectly well marked. I think even the
least experienced eye can scarcely but feel the truth of this distance
as compared with Stanfield's. In the latter, the eye gets something of
the form, and therefore wonders it sees no more; the impression on it,
therefore, is of hills within distinctly visible distance, indiscernible
through want of light or dim atmosphere; and the effect is, of course,
smallness of space, with obscurity of light and thickness of air. In
Turner's the eye gets nothing of the substance, and wonders it sees so
much of the outline; the impression is, therefore, of mountains too far
off to be ever distinctly seen, rendered clear by brilliancy of light
and purity of atmosphere; and the effect, consequently, vastness of
space, with intensity of light and crystalline transparency of air.
Sec. 16. Extreme distance of large objects always characterized by very
sharp outline.
These truths are invariably given in every one of Turner's distances,
that is to say, we have always in them two principal facts forced on our
notice; transparency, or filminess of mass, and excessive sharpness of
edge. And I wish particularly to insist upon this sharpness of edge,
because it is not a casual or changeful habit of nature; it is the
unfailing characteristic of all very great distances. It is quite a
mistake to suppose that slurred or melting lines are characteristic of
distant _large_ objects; they may be so, as before observed, (Sec. II.
Chap. IV. Sec. 4,) when the focus of the eye is not adapted to them; but,
when the eye is really directed to the distance, melting lines are
characteristic only of thick mist and vapor between us and the object,
not of the removal of the object. If a thing has character upon its
outline, as a tree for instance, or a mossy stone, the farther it is
removed from us, the sharper the outline of the whole mass will become,
though in doing so, the particular details which make up the character
will become confused in the manner described in the same chapter. A tree
fifty yards from us, taken as a mass, has a soft outline, because the
leaves and interstices have some effect on the eye. But put it ten miles
off against the sky, and its outline will be so sharp that you cannot
tell it from a rock. There are three trees on the Mont Saleve, about
five miles from Geneva, which from the city, as they stand on the ridge
of the hill, are seen defined against the sky. The keenest eye in the
world could not tell them from stones. So in a mountain five or six
miles off, bushes, and heather, and roughnesses of knotty ground and
rock, have still some effect on the eye, and by becoming confused and
mingled as before described, soften the outline. But let the mountain be
thirty miles off, and its edge will be as sharp as a knife. Let it, as
in the case of the Alps, be seventy or eighty miles off, and though it
has become so faint that the morning mist is not so transparent, its
outline will be beyond all imitation for excessive sharpness. Thus,
then, the character of extreme distance is always excessive keenness of
edge. If you soften your outline, you either put mist between you and
the object, and in doing so diminish, your distance, for it is
impossible you should see so far through mist as through clear air; or,
if you keep an impression of clear air, you bring the object close to
the observer, diminish its size in proportion, and if the aerial colors,
excessive blues, etc., be retained, represent an impossibility.
Sec. 17. Want of this decision in Claude.
Take Claude's distance (in No. 244, Dulwich Gallery,)[53] on the right
of the picture. It is as pure blue as ever came from the pallet, laid on
thick; you cannot see through it, there is not the slightest vestige of
transparency or filminess about it, and its edge is soft and blunt.
Hence, if it be meant for near hills, the blue is impossible, and the
want of details impossible, in the clear atmosphere indicated through
the whole picture. If it be meant for extreme distance, the blunt edge
is impossible, and the opacity is impossible. I do not know a single
distance of the Italian school to which the same observation is not
entirely applicable, except, perhaps, one or two of Nicholas Poussin's.
They always involve, under any supposition whatsoever, at least two
impossibilities.
Sec. 18. The perpetual rendering of it by Turner.
I need scarcely mention in particular any more of the works of Turner,
because there is not one of his mountain distances in which these facts
are not fully exemplified. Look at the last vignette--the Farewell, in
Rogers's Italy; observe the excessive sharpness of all the edges, almost
amounting to lines, in the distance, while there is scarcely one
decisive edge in the foreground. Look at the hills of the distance in
the Dunstaffnage, Glencoe, and Loch Achray, (illustrations to Scott,) in
the latter of which the left-hand side of the Benvenue is actually
marked with a dark line. In fact, Turner's usual mode of executing these
passages is perfectly evident in all his drawings; it is not often that
we meet with a very broad dash of wet color in his finished works, but
in these distances, as we before saw of his shadows, all the effect has
been evidently given by a dash of very moist pale color, probably
turning the paper upside down, so that a very firm edge may be left at
the top of the mountain as the color dries. And in the Battle of Marengo
we find the principle carried so far as to give nothing more than actual
outline for the representation of the extreme distance, while all the
other hills in the picture are distinctly darkest at the edge. This
plate, though coarsely executed, is yet one of the noblest illustrations
of mountain character and magnitude existing.
Sec. 19. Effects of snow, how imperfectly studied.
Such, then, are the chief characteristics of the highest peaks and
extreme distances of all hills, as far as the forms of the rocks
themselves, and the aerial appearances especially belonging to them, are
alone concerned. There is, however, yet another point to be
considered--the modification of their form caused by incumbent snow.
Pictures of winter scenery are nearly as common as moonlights, and are
usually executed by the same order of artists, that is to say, the most
incapable; it being remarkably easy to represent the moon as a white
wafer on a black ground, or to scratch out white branches on a cloudy
sky. Nevertheless, among Flemish paintings several valuable
representations of winter are to be found, and some clever pieces of
effect among the moderns, as Hunt's, for instance, and De Wint's. But
all such efforts end in effect alone, nor have I ever in any single
instance seen a snow _wreath_, I do not say thoroughly, but even
decently, drawn.
In the range of inorganic nature, I doubt if any object can be found
more perfectly beautiful than a fresh, deep snow-drift, seen under warm
light.[54] Its curves are of inconceivable perfection and changefulness,
its surface and transparency alike exquisite, its light and shade of
inexhaustible variety and inimitable finish, the shadows sharp, pale,
and of heavenly color, the reflected lights intense and multitudinous,
and mingled with the sweet occurrences of transmitted light. No mortal
hand can approach the majesty or loveliness of it, yet it is possible by
care and skill at least to suggest the preciousness of its forms and
intimate the nature of its light and shade; but this has never been
attempted; it could not be done except by artists of a rank exceedingly
high, and there is something about the feeling of snow in ordinary
scenery which such men do not like. But when the same qualities are
exhibited on a magnificent Alpine scale and in a position where they
interfere with no feeling of life, I see not why they should be
neglected, as they have hitherto been, unless that the difficulty of
reconciling the brilliancy of snow with a picturesque light and shade,
is so great that most good artists disguise or avoid the greater part of
upper Alpine scenery, and hint at the glacier so slightly, that they do
not feel the necessity of careful study of its forms. Habits of
exaggeration increase the evil: I have seen a sketch from nature, by one
of the most able of our landscape painters, in which a cloud had been
mistaken for a snowy summit, and the hint thus taken exaggerated, as was
likely, into an enormous mass of impossible height, and unintelligent
form, when the mountain itself, for which the cloud had been mistaken,
though subtending an angle of about eighteen or twenty degrees, instead
of the fifty attributed to it, was of a form so exquisite that it might
have been a profitable lesson truly studied to Phidias. Nothing but
failure can result from such methods of sketching, nor have I ever seen
a single instance of an earnest study of snowy mountains by any one.
Hence, wherever they are introduced, their drawing is utterly
unintelligent, the forms being those of white rocks, or of rocks lightly
powdered with snow, showing sufficiently that not only the painters have
never studied the mountain carefully from below, but that they have
never climbed into the snowy region. Harding's rendering of the high
Alps (_vide_ the engraving of Chamonix, and of the Wengern Alp, in the
illustrations to Byron) is best; but even he shows no perception of the
real anatomy. Stanfield paints only white rocks instead of snow. Turner
invariably avoids the difficulty, though he has shown himself capable of
grappling with it in the ice of the Liber Studiorum, (Mer de Glace,)
which is very cold and slippery and very like ice; but of the crusts and
wreaths of the higher snow he has taken no cognizance. Even the
vignettes to Rogers's Poems fail in this respect. It would be vain to
attempt in this place to give any detailed account of the phenomena of
the upper snows; but it may be well to note those general principles
which every artist ought to keep in mind when he has to paint an Alp.
Sec. 20. General principles of its forms on the Alps.
Snow is modified by the under forms of the hill in some sort, as dress
is by the anatomy of the human frame. And as no dress can be well laid
on without conceiving the body beneath, so no Alp can be drawn unless
its under form is conceived first, and its snow laid on afterwards.
Every high Alp has as much snow upon it as it can hold or carry. It is
not, observe, a mere coating of snow of given depth throughout, but it
is snow loaded on until the rocks can hold no more. The surplus does not
fall in the winter, because, fastened by continual frost, the quantity
of snow which an Alp can carry is greater than each single winter can
bestow; it falls in the first mild days of spring in enormous
avalanches. Afterwards the melting continues, gradually removing from
all the steep rocks the small quantity of snow which was all they could
hold, and leaving them black and bare among the accumulated fields of
unknown depth, which occupy the capacious valleys and less inclined
superfices of the mountain.
Hence it follows that the deepest snow does not take nor indicate the
actual forms of the rocks on which it lies, but it hangs from peak to
peak in unbroken and sweeping festoons, or covers whole groups of peaks,
which afford it sufficient hold, with vast and unbroken domes: these
festoons and domes being guided in their curves, and modified in size,
by the violence and prevalent direction of the winter winds.
We have, therefore, every variety of indication of the under mountain
form; first, the mere coating, which is soon to be withdrawn, and which
shows as a mere sprinkling or powdering after a storm on the higher
peaks; then the shallow incrustation on the steep sides glazed by the
running down of its frequent meltings, frozen again in the night; then
the deep snow more or less cramped or modified by sudden eminences of
emergent rock, or hanging in fractured festoons and huge blue irregular
cliffs on the mountain flanks, and over the edges and summits of their
precipices in nodding drifts, far overhanging, like a cornice, (perilous
things to approach the edge of from above;) finally, the pure
accumulation of overwhelming depth, smooth, sweeping, and almost
cleftless, and modified only by its lines of drifting. Countless
phenomena of exquisite beauty belong to each of these conditions, not to
speak of the transition of the snow into ice at lower levels; but all on
which I shall at present insist is that the artist should not think of
his Alp merely as a white mountain, but conceive it as a group of peaks
loaded with an accumulation of snow, and that especially he should avail
himself of the exquisite curvatures, never failing, by which the snow
unites and opposes the harsh and broken lines of the rock. I shall enter
into farther detail on this subject hereafter; at present it is useless
to do so, as I have no examples to refer to, either in ancient or modern
art. No statement of these facts has hitherto been made, nor any
evidence given even of their observation, except by the most inferior
painters.[55]
Sec. 21. Average paintings of Switzerland. Its real spirit has scarcely yet
been caught.
Various works in green and white appear from time to time on the walls
of the Academy, _like_ the Alps indeed, but so frightfully like, that we
shudder and sicken at the sight of them, as we do when our best friend
shows us into his dining-room, to see a portrait of himself, which
"everybody thinks very like." We should be glad to see fewer of these,
for Switzerland is quite beyond the power of any but first-rate men, and
is exceedingly bad practice for a rising artist; but, let us express a
hope that Alpine scenery will not continue to be neglected as it has
been, by those who alone are capable of treating it. We love Italy, but
we have had rather a surfeit of it lately;--too many peaked caps and
flat-headed pines. We should be very grateful to Harding and Stanfield
if they would refresh us a little among the snow, and give us, what we
believe them to be capable of giving us, a faithful expression of Alpine
ideal. We are well aware of the pain inflicted on an artist's mind by
the preponderance of black, and white, and green, over more available
colors; but there is nevertheless in generic Alpine scenery, a fountain
of feeling yet unopened--a chord of harmony yet untouched by art. It
will be struck by the first man who can separate what is national, in
Switzerland, from what is ideal. We do not want chalets and three-legged
stools, cow-bells and buttermilk. We want the pure and holy hills,
treated as a link between heaven and earth.
FOOTNOTES
[53] One of the most genuine Claudes I know.
[54] Compare Part III. Sect. I. Chap. 9, Sec. 5.
[55] I hear of some study of Alpine scenery among the professors at
Geneva; but all foreign landscape that I have ever met with has been
so utterly ignorant that I hope for nothing except from our own
painters.
CHAPTER III.
OF THE INFERIOR MOUNTAINS.
Sec. 1. The inferior mountains are distinguished from the central by being
divided into beds.
We have next to investigate the character of those intermediate masses
which constitute the greater part of all hill scenery, forming the
outworks of the high ranges, and being almost the sole constituents of
such lower groups as those of Cumberland, Scotland, or South Italy.
All mountains whatsoever, not composed of the granite or gneiss rocks
described in the preceding chapter, nor volcanic, (these latter being
comparatively rare,) are composed of _beds_, not of homogeneous, heaped
materials, but of accumulated layers, whether of rock or soil. It may be
slate, sandstone, limestone, gravel, or clay; but whatever the
substance, it is laid in layers, not in a mass. These layers are
scarcely ever horizontal, and may slope to any degree, often occurring
vertical, the boldness of the hill outline commonly depending in a great
degree on their inclination. In consequence of this division into beds,
every mountain will have two great sets of lines more or less prevailing
in its contours--one indicative of the surfaces of the beds, where they
come out from under each other--and the other indicative of the
extremities or edges of the beds, where their continuity has been
interrupted. And these two great sets of lines will commonly be at right
angles with each other, or nearly so. If the surface of the bed approach
a horizontal line, its termination will approach the vertical, and this
is the most usual and ordinary way in which a precipice is produced.
Sec. 2. Farther division of these beds by joints.
Farther, in almost all rocks there is a third division of substance,
which gives to their beds a tendency to split transversely in some
directions rather than others, giving rise to what geologists call
"joints," and throwing the whole rock into blocks more or less
rhomboidal; so that the beds are not terminated by torn or ragged edges,
but by faces comparatively smooth and even, usually inclined to each
other at some definite angle. The whole arrangement may be tolerably
represented by the bricks of a wall, whose tiers may be considered as
strata, and whose sides and extremities will represent the joints by
which those strata are divided, varying, however, their direction in
different rocks, and in the same rock under differing circumstances.
Sec. 3. And by lines of lamination.
Finally, in the slates, grauwackes, and some calcareous beds, in the
greater number, indeed, of _mountain_ rocks, we find another most
conspicuous feature of general structure--the lines of lamination, which
divide the whole rock into an infinite number of delicate plates or
layers, sometimes parallel to the direction or "strike" of the strata,
oftener obliquely crossing it, and sometimes, apparently, altogether
independent of it, maintaining a consistent and unvarying slope through
a series of beds contorted and undulating in every conceivable
direction. These lines of lamination extend their influence to the
smallest fragment, causing it (as, for example, common roofing slate) to
break smooth in one direction, and with a ragged edge in another, and
marking the faces of the beds and joints with distinct and numberless
lines, commonly far more conspicuous in a near view than the larger and
more important divisions.
Sec. 4. Variety and seeming uncertainty under which these laws are
manifested.
Now, it cannot be too carefully held in mind, in examining the
principles of mountain structure, that nearly all the laws of nature
with respect to external form are rather universal tendencies, evidenced
by a plurality of instances, than imperative necessities complied with
by all. For instance, it may be said to be a universal law with respect
to the boughs of all trees that they incline their extremities more to
the ground in proportion as they are lower on the trunk, and that the
higher their point of insertion is, the more they share in the upward
tendency of the trunk itself. But yet there is not a single group of
boughs in any one tree which does not show exceptions to the rule, and
present boughs lower in insertion, and yet steeper in inclination, than
their neighbors. Nor is this defect or deformity, but the result of the
constant habit of nature to carry variety into her very principles, and
make the symmetry and beauty of her laws the more felt by the grace and
accidentalism with which they are carried out. No one familiar with
foliage could doubt for an instant of the necessity of giving evidence
of this downward tendency in the boughs; but it would be nearly as great
an offence against truth to make the law hold good with every individual
branch, as not to exhibit its influence on the majority. Now, though the
laws of mountain form are more rigid and constant than those of
vegetation, they are subject to the same species of exception in
carrying out. Though every mountain has these great tendencies in its
lines, not one in a thousand of those lines is absolutely consistent
with and obedient to this universal tendency. There are lines in every
direction, and of almost every kind, but the sum and aggregate of those
lines will invariably indicate the _universal_ force and influence to
which they are all subjected; and of these lines there will, I repeat,
be two principal sets or classes, pretty nearly at right angles with
each other. When both are inclined, they give rise to peaks or ridges;
when one is nearly horizontal and the other vertical, to table-lands and
precipices.
This then is the broad organization of all hills, modified afterwards by
time and weather, concealed by superincumbent soil and vegetation, and
ramified into minor and more delicate details in a way presently to be
considered, but nevertheless universal in its great first influence, and
giving to all mountains a particular cast and inclination; like the
exertion of voluntary power in a definite direction, an internal spirit,
manifesting itself in every crag, and breathing in every slope, flinging
and forcing the mighty mass towards the heaven with an expression and an
energy like that of life.
Sec. 5. The perfect expression of them in Turner's Loch Coriskin.
Now, as in the case of the structure of the central peaks described
above, so also here, if I had to give a clear idea of this organization
of the lower hills, where it is seen in its greatest perfection, with a
mere view to geological truth, I should not refer to any geological
drawings, but I should take the Loch Coriskin of Turner. It has luckily
been admirably engraved, and for all purposes of reasoning or form, is
nearly as effective in the print as in the drawing. Looking at any group
of the multitudinous lines which make up this mass of mountain, they
appear to be running anywhere and everywhere; there are none parallel to
each other, none resembling each other for a moment; yet the whole mass
is felt at once to be composed with the most rigid parallelism, the
surfaces of the beds towards the left, their edges or escarpments
towards the right. In the centre, near the top of the ridge, the edge of
a bed is beautifully defined, casting its shadow on the surface of the
one beneath it; this shadow marking by three jags the chasms caused in
the inferior one by three of its parallel joints. Every peak in the
distance is evidently subject to the same great influence, and the
evidence is completed by the flatness and evenness of the steep surfaces
of the beds which rise out of the lake on the extreme right, parallel
with those in the centre.
Sec. 6. Glencoe and other works.
Sec. 7. Especially the Mount Lebanon.
Turn to Glencoe, in the same series (the Illustrations to Scott). We
have in the mass of mountain on the left, the most beautiful indication
of vertical beds of a finely laminated rock, terminated by even joints
towards the precipice; while the whole sweep of the landscape, as far as
the most distant peaks, is evidently governed by one great and simple
tendency upwards to the left, those most distant peaks themselves lying
over one another in the same direction. In the Daphne hunting with
Leucippus, the mountains on the left descend in two precipices to the
plain, each of which is formed by a vast escarpment of the beds whose
upper surfaces are shown between the two cliffs, sinking with an even
slope from the summit of the lowest to the base of the highest, under
which they evidently descend, being exposed in this manner for a length
of five or six miles. The same structure is shown, though with more
complicated development, on the left of the Loch Katrine. But perhaps
the finest instance, or at least the most marked of all, will be found
in the exquisite Mount Lebanon, with the convent of St. Antonio,
engraved in Finden's Bible. There is not one shade nor touch on the rock
which is not indicative of the lines of stratification; and every
fracture is marked with a straightforward simplicity which makes you
feel that the artist has nothing in his heart but a keen love of the
pure unmodified truth; there is no effort to disguise the repetition of
forms, no apparent aim at artificial arrangement or scientific grouping;
the rocks are laid one above another with unhesitating decision; every
shade is understood in a moment, felt as a dark side, or a shadow, or a
fissure, and you may step from one block or bed to another until you
reach the mountain summit. And yet, though there seems no effort to
disguise the repetition of forms, see how it _is_ disguised, just as
nature would have done it, by the perpetual play and changefulness of
the very lines which appear so parallel; now bending a little up, or
down, or losing themselves, or running into each other, the old story
over and over again,--infinity. For here is still the great distinction
between Turner's work and that of a common artist. Hundreds could have
given the parallelism of blocks, but none but himself could have done so
without the actual repetition of a single line or feature.
Sec. 8. Compared with the work of Salvator;
Now compare with this the second mountain from the left in the picture
of Salvator, No. 220 in the Dulwich Gallery. The whole is first laid in
with a very delicate and masterly gray, right in tone, agreeable in
color, quite unobjectionable for a beginning. But how is this made into
rock? On the light side Salvator gives us a multitude of touches, all
exactly like one another, and therefore, it is to be hoped, quite
patterns of perfection in rock-drawing, since they are too good to be
even varied. Every touch is a dash of the brush, as nearly as possible
in the shape of a comma, round and bright at the top, convex on its
right side, concave on its left, and melting off at the bottom into the
gray. These are laid in confusion one above another, some paler, some
brighter, some scarcely discernible, but all alike in shape. Now, I am
not aware myself of any particular object, either in earth or heaven,
which these said touches do at all resemble or portray. I do not,
however, assert that they may not resemble something--feathers, perhaps;
but I do say, and say with perfect confidence, that they may be Chinese
for rocks, or Sanscrit for rocks, or symbolical of rocks in some
mysterious and undeveloped character; but that they are no more _like_
rocks than the brush that made them. The dark sides appear to embrace
and overhang the lights; they cast no shadows, are broken by no
fissures, and furnish, as food for contemplation, nothing but a series
of concave curves.
Sec. 9. And of Poussin.
Yet if we go on to No. 269, we shall find something a great deal worse.
I can believe Gaspar Poussin capable of committing as much sin against
nature as most people; but I certainly do not suspect him of having had
any hand in this thing, at least after he was ten years old.
Nevertheless, it shows what he is supposed capable of by his admirers,
and will serve for a broad illustration of all those absurdities which
he himself in a less degree, and with feeling and thought to atone for
them, perpetually commits. Take the white bit of rock on the opposite
side of the river, just above the right arm of the Niobe, and tell me of
what the square green daubs of the brush at its base can be conjectured
to be typical. Rocks with pale-brown light sides, and rich green dark
sides, are a phenomenon perhaps occurring in some of the improved
passages of nature among our Cumberland lakes; where I remember once
having seen a bed of roses, of peculiar magnificence, tastefully and
artistically assisted in effect by the rocks above it being painted pink
to match; but I do not think that they are a kind of thing which the
clumsiness and false taste of nature can be supposed frequently to
produce; even granting that these same sweeps of the brush could, by any
exercise of the imagination, be conceived representative of a dark, or
any other side, which is far more than I am inclined to grant; seeing
that there is no east shadow, no appearance of reflected light, of
substance, or of character on the edge; nothing, in short, but pure,
staring green paint, scratched heavily on a white ground. Nor is there a
touch in the picture more expressive. All are the mere dragging of the
brush here and there and everywhere, without meaning or intention;
winding, twisting, zigzagging, doing anything in fact which may serve to
break up the light and destroy its breadth, without bestowing in return
one hint or shadow of anything like form. This picture is, indeed, an
extraordinary case, but the Salvator above mentioned is a characteristic
and exceedingly favorable example of the usual mode of mountain drawing
among the old landscape painters.[56] Their admirers may be challenged
to bring forward a single instance of their expressing, or even
appearing to have noted, the great laws of structure above explained.
Their hills are, without exception, irregular earthy heaps, without
energy or direction of any kind, marked with shapeless shadows and
meaningless lines; sometimes, indeed, where great sublimity has been
aimed at, approximating to the pure and exalted ideal of rocks, which,
in the most artistical specimens of China cups and plates, we see
suspended from aerial pagodas, or balanced upon peacocks' tails, but
never warranting even the wildest theorist in the conjecture that their
perpetrators had ever seen a mountain in their lives. Let us, however,
look farther into the modifications of character by which nature
conceals the regularity of her first plan; for although all mountains
are organized as we have seen, their organization is always modified,
and often nearly concealed, by changes wrought upon them by external
influence.
Sec. 10. Effects of external influence on mountain form.
We ought, when speaking of their stratification, to have noticed another
great law, which must, however, be understood with greater latitude of
application than any of the others, as very far from imperative or
constant in particular cases, though universal in its influence on the
aggregate of all. It is that the lines by which rocks are terminated,
are always steeper and more inclined to the vertical as we approach the
summit of the mountain. Thousands of cases are to be found in every
group, of rocks and lines horizontal at the top of the mountain and
vertical at the bottom; but they are still the exceptions, and the
average out of a given number of lines in any rock formation whatsoever,
will be found increasing in perpendicularity as they rise. Consequently
the great skeleton lines of rock outline are always concave; that is to
say, all distant ranges of rocky mountain approximate more or less to a
series of concave curves, meeting in peaks, like a range of posts with
chains hanging between. I do not say that convex forms will not
perpetually occur, but that the tendency of the majority will always be
to assume the form of sweeping, curved valleys, with angular peaks; not
of rounded convex summits, with angular valleys. This structure is
admirably exemplified in the second vignette in Rogers's Italy, and in
Piacenza.
Sec. 11. The gentle convexity caused by aqueous erosion.
But although this is the primary form of all hills, and that which will
always cut against the sky in every distant range, there are two great
influences whose tendency is directly the reverse, and which modify, to
a great degree, both the evidences of stratification and this external
form. These are aqueous erosion and disintegration. The latter only is
to be taken into consideration when we have to do with minor features of
crag; but the former is a force in constant action--of the very utmost
importance--a force to which one-half of the great outlines of all
mountains is entirely owing, and which has much influence upon every one
of their details.
Now the tendency of aqueous action over a large elevated surface is
_always_ to make that surface symmetrically and evenly convex and
dome-like, sloping gradually more and more as it descends, until it
reaches an inclination of about 40 deg., at which slope it will descend
perfectly straight to the valley; for at that slope the soil washed from
above will accumulate upon the hill-side, as it cannot lie in steeper
beds. This influence, then, is exercised more or less on all mountains,
with greater or less effect in proportion as the rock is harder or
softer, more or less liable to decomposition, more or less recent in
date of elevation, and more or less characteristic in its original
forms; but it universally induces, in the lower parts of mountains, a
series of the most exquisitely symmetrical convex curves, terminating,
as they descend to the valley, in uniform and uninterrupted slopes; this
symmetrical structure being perpetually interrupted by cliffs and
projecting masses, which give evidence of the interior parallelism of
the mountain anatomy, but which interrupt the convex forms more
frequently by rising out of them, than by indentation.
Sec. 12. And the effect of the action of torrents.
There remains but one fact more to be noticed. All mountains, in some
degree, but especially those which are composed of soft or decomposing
substance, are delicately and symmetrically furrowed by the descent of
streams. The traces of their action commence at the very summits, fine
threads, and multitudinous, like the uppermost branches of a delicate
tree. They unite in groups as they descend, concentrating gradually into
dark undulating ravines, into which the body of the mountain descends on
each side, at first in a convex curve, but at the bottom with the same
uniform slope on each side which it assumes in its final descent to the
plain, unless the rock be very hard, when the stream will cut itself a
vertical chasm at the bottom of the curves, and there will be no even
slope.[57] If, on the other hand, the rock be very soft, the slopes will
increase rapidly in height and depth from day to day; washed away at the
bottom and crumbling at the top, until, by their reaching the summit of
the masses of rock which separate the active torrents, the whole
mountain is divided into a series of penthouse-like ridges, all guiding
to its summit, and becoming steeper and narrower as they ascend; these
in their turn being divided by similar, but smaller ravines--caused in
the same manner--into the same kind of ridges; and these again by
another series, the arrangement being carried finer and farther
according to the softness of the rock. The south side of Saddleback, in
Cumberland, is a characteristic example; and the Montagne du Tacondy, in
Chamonix, a noble instance of one of these ridges or buttresses, with
all its subdivisions, on a colossal scale.
Sec. 13. The exceeding simplicity of contour caused by these influences.
Sec. 14. And multiplicity of feature.
Now we wish to draw especial attention to the broad and bold simplicity
of mass, and the excessive complication of details, which influences
like these, acting on an enormous scale, must inevitably produce in all
mountain groups; because each individual part and promontory, being
compelled to assume the same symmetrical curves as its neighbors, and to
descend at precisely the same slope to the valley, falls in with their
prevailing lines, and becomes a part of a great and harmonious whole,
instead of an unconnected and discordant individual. It is true that
each of these members has its own touches of specific character, its own
projecting crags and peculiar hollows; but by far the greater portion of
its lines will be such as unite with, though they do not repeat, those
of its neighbors, and carry out the evidence of one great influence and
spirit to the limits of the scene. This effort is farther aided by the
original unity and connection of the rocks themselves, which though it
often may be violently interrupted, is never without evidence of
existence; for the very interruption itself forces the eye to feel that
there is something to be interrupted, a sympathy and similarity of
lines and fractures, which, however full of variety and change of
direction, never lose the appearance of symmetry of one kind or another.
But, on the other hand, it is to be remembered that these great
sympathizing masses are not one mountain, but a thousand mountains; that
they are originally composed of a multitude of separate eminences, hewn
and chiselled indeed into associating form, but each retaining still its
marked points and features of character,--that each of these individual
members has, by the very process which assimilated it to the rest, been
divided and subdivided into equally multitudinous groups of minor
mountains; finally, that the whole complicated system is interrupted
forever and ever by daring manifestations of the inward mountain
will--by the precipice which has submitted to no modulation of the
torrent, and the peak which has bowed itself to no terror of the storm.
Hence we see that the same imperative laws which require perfect
simplicity of mass, require infinite and termless complication of
detail,--that there will not be an inch nor a hairbreadth of the
gigantic heap which has not its touch of separate character, its own
peculiar curve, stealing out for an instant and then melting into the
common line; felt for a moment by the blue mist of the hollow beyond,
then lost when it crosses the enlightened slope,--that all this
multiplicity will be grouped into larger divisions, each felt by their
increasing aerial perspective, and their instants of individual form,
these into larger, and these into larger still, until all are merged in
the great impression and prevailing energy of the two or three vast
dynasties which divide the kingdom of the scene.
Sec. 15. Both utterly neglected in ancient art.
There is no vestige nor shadow of approach to such treatment as this in
the whole compass of ancient art. Whoever the master, his hills,
wherever he has attempted them, have not the slightest trace of
association or connection; they are separate, conflicting, confused,
petty and paltry heaps of earth; there is no marking of distances or
divisions in their body; they may have holes in them, but no
valleys,--protuberances and excrescences, but no parts; and in
consequence are invariably diminutive and contemptible in their whole
appearance and impression.
Sec. 16. The fidelity of treatment in Turner's Daphne and Leucippas.
But look at the mass of mountain on the right in Turner's Daphne hunting
with Leucippus. It is simple, broad, and united as one surge of a
swelling sea; it rises in an unbroken line along the valley, and lifts
its promontories with an equal slope. But it contains in its body ten
thousand hills. There is not a quarter of an inch of its surface without
its suggestion of increasing distance and individual form. First, on the
right, you have a range of tower-like precipices, the clinging wood
climbing along their ledges and cresting their summits, white waterfalls
gleaming through its leaves; not, as in Claude's scientific ideals,
poured in vast torrents over the top, and carefully keeping all the way
down on the most projecting parts of the sides; but stealing down,
traced from point to point, through shadow after shadow, by their
evanescent foam and flashing light,--here a wreath, and there a
ray,--through the deep chasms and hollow ravines, out of which rise the
soft rounded slopes of mightier mountain, surge beyond surge, immense
and numberless, of delicate and gradual curve, accumulating in the sky
until their garment of forest is exchanged for the shadowy fold of
slumbrous morning cloud, above which the utmost silver peak shines
islanded and alone. Put what mountain painting you will beside this, of
any other artist, and its heights will look like mole-hills in
comparison, because it will not have the unity nor the multiplicity
which are in nature, and with Turner, the signs of size.
Sec. 17. And in the Avalanche and Inundation.
Again, in the Avalanche and Inundation, we have for the whole subject
nothing but one vast bank of united mountain, and one stretch of
uninterrupted valley. Though the bank is broken into promontory beyond
promontory, peak above peak, each the abode of a new tempest, the
arbiter of a separate desolation, divided from each other by the rushing
of the snow, by the motion of the storm, by the thunder of the torrent;
the mighty unison of their dark and lofty line, the brotherhood of ages,
is preserved unbroken; and the broad valley at their feet, though
measured league after league away by a thousand passages of sun and
darkness, and marked with fate beyond fate of hamlet and of inhabitant,
lies yet but as a straight and narrow channel, a filling furrow before
the flood. Whose work will you compare with this? Salvator's gray heaps
of earth, seven yards high, covered with bunchy brambles, that we may be
under no mistake about the size, thrown about at random in a little
plain, beside a zigzagging river, just wide enough to admit of the
possibility of there being fish in it, and with banks just broad enough
to allow the respectable angler or hermit to sit upon them conveniently
in the foreground? Is there more of nature in such paltriness, think
you, than in the valley and the mountain which bend to each other like
the trough of the sea; with the flank of the one swept in one surge into
the height of heaven, until the pine forests lie on its immensity like
the shadows of narrow clouds, and the hollow of the other laid league by
league into the blue of the air, until its white villages flash in the
distance only like the fall of a sunbeam?
Sec. 18. The rarity among secondary hills of steep slopes or high
precipices.
But let us examine by what management of the details themselves this
wholeness and vastness of effect are given. We have just seen (Sec. 11)
that it is impossible for the slope of a mountain, not actually a
precipice of rock, to exceed 35 deg. or among secondary 40 deg., and that by far
the greater part of all hill-surface is composed of graceful curves of
much less degree than this, reaching 40 deg. only as their ultimate and
utmost inclination. It must be farther observed that the interruptions
to such curves, by precipices or steps, are always small in proportion
to the slopes themselves. Precipices rising vertically more than 100
feet are very rare among the secondary hills of which we are speaking. I
am not aware of any cliff in England or Wales where a plumb-line can
swing clear for 200 feet; and even although sometimes, with intervals,
breaks, and steps, we get perhaps 800 feet of a slope of 60 deg. or 70 deg., yet
not only are these cases very rare, but even these have little influence
on the great contours of a mountain 4000 or 5000 feet in elevation,
being commonly balanced by intervals of ascent not exceeding 6 deg. or 8 deg..
The result of which is, first, that the peaks and precipices of a
mountain appear as little more than jags or steps emerging from its
great curves; and, secondly, that the bases of all hills are enormously
extensive as compared with their elevation, so that there must be always
a horizontal distance between the observer and the summit five or six
times exceeding the perpendicular one.
Sec. 19. And consequent expression of horizontal distance in their ascent.
Now it is evident, that whatever the actual angle of elevation of the
mountain may be, every exhibition of this horizontal distance between us
and the summit is an addition to its height, and of course to its
impressiveness; while every endeavor to exhibit its slope as steep and
sudden, is diminution at once of its distance and elevation. In
consequence nature is constantly endeavoring to impress upon us this
horizontal distance, which, even in spite of all her means of
manifesting it, we are apt to forget or underestimate; and all her
noblest effects depend on the full measurement and feeling of it. And it
is to the abundant and marvellous expression of it by Turner, that I
would direct especial attention, as being that which is in itself
demonstrative of the highest knowledge and power--knowledge, in the
constant use of lines of subdued slope in preference to steep or violent
ascents, and in the perfect subjection of all such features, when they
necessarily occur, to the larger masses; and power, in the inimitable
statements of retiring space by mere painting of surface details,
without the aid of crossing shadows, divided forms, or any other
artifice.
Sec. 20. Full statement of all these facts in various works of Turner,
Caudebec, etc.
The Caudebec, in the Rivers of France, is a fine instance of almost
every fact which we have been pointing out. We have in it, first, the
clear expression of what takes place constantly among hills,--that the
river, as it passes through the valley, will fall backwards and forwards
from side to side, lying first, if I may so speak, with all its weight
against the hills on the one side, and then against those on the other;
so that, as here it is exquisitely told, in each of its circular sweeps
the whole force of its current is brought deep and close to the bases of
the hills, while the water on the side next the plain is shallow,
deepening gradually. In consequence of this, the hills are cut away at
their bases by the current, so that their slopes are interrupted by
precipices mouldering to the water. Observe first, how nobly Turner has
given us the perfect unity of the whole mass of hill, making us
understand that every ravine in it has been cut gradually by streams.
The first eminence, beyond the city, is not disjointed from, or
independent of, the one succeeding, but evidently part of the same
whole, originally united, separated only by the action of the stream
between. The association of the second and third is still more clearly
told, for we see that there has been a little longitudinal valley
running along the brow of their former united mass, which, after the
ravine had been cut between, formed the two jags which Turner has given
us at the same point in each of their curves. This great triple group
has, however, been originally distinct from those beyond it; for we see
that these latter are only the termination of the enormous even slope,
which appears again on the extreme right, having been interrupted by the
rise of the near hills. Observe how the descent of the whole series is
kept gentle and subdued, never suffered to become steep except where it
has been cut away by the river, the sudden precipice caused by which is
exquisitely marked in the last two promontories, where they are defined
against the bright horizon; and, finally, observe how, in the ascent of
the nearest eminence beyond the city, without one cast shadow or any
division of distances, every yard of surface is felt to be retiring by
the mere painting of its details,--how we are permitted to walk up it,
and along its top, and are carried, before we are half way up, a league
or two forward into the picture. The difficulty of doing this, however,
can scarcely be appreciated except by an artist.
Sec. 21. The use of considering geological truths.
I do not mean to assert that this great painter is acquainted with the
geological laws and facts he has thus illustrated; I am not aware
whether he be or not; I merely wish to demonstrate, in points admitting
of demonstration, that intense observation of, and strict adherence to
truth, which it is impossible to demonstrate in its less tangible and
more delicate manifestations. However I may _feel_ the truth of every
touch and line, I cannot _prove_ truth, except in large and general
features; and I leave it to the arbitration of every man's reason,
whether it be not likely that the painter who is thus so rigidly
faithful in great things that every one of his pictures might be the
illustration of a lecture on the physical sciences, is not likely to be
faithful also in small.
Sec. 22. Expression of retiring surface by Turner contrasted with the work
of Claude.
Honfleur, and the scene between Clairmont and Mauves, supply us with
farther instances of the same grand simplicity of treatment; and the
latter is especially remarkable for its expression of the furrowing of
the hills by descending water, in the complete roundness and symmetry
of their curves, and in the delicate and sharp shadows which are cast in
the undulating ravines. It is interesting to compare with either of
these noble works such hills as those of Claude, on the left of the
picture marked 260 in the Dulwich Gallery. There is no detail nor
surface in one of them; not an inch of ground for us to stand upon; we
must either sit astride upon the edge, or fall to the bottom. I could
not point to a more complete instance of mountain calumniation; nor can
I oppose it more completely, in every circumstance, than with the
Honfleur of Turner, already mentioned; in which there is not one edge
nor division admitted, and yet we are permitted to climb up the hill
from the town, and pass far into the mist along its top, and so descend
mile after mile along the ridge to seaward, until, without one break in
the magnificent unity of progress, we are carried down to the utmost
horizon. And contrast the brown paint of Claude, which you can only
guess to be meant for rock or soil because it _is_ brown, with Turner's
profuse, pauseless richness of feature, carried through all the enormous
space--the unmeasured wealth of exquisite detail, over which the mind
can dwell, and walk, and wander, and feast forever, without finding
either one break in its vast simplicity, or one vacuity in its
exhaustless splendor.
Sec. 23. The same moderation of slope in the contours of his higher hills.
But these, and hundreds of others which it is sin not to dwell
upon--wooded hills and undulating moors of North England--rolling surges
of park and forest of the South--soft and vine-clad ranges of French
coteaux, casting their oblique shadows on silver leagues of glancing
rivers,--and olive-whitened promontories of Alp and Apennine, are only
instances of Turner's management of the lower and softer hills. In the
bolder examples of his powers, where he is dealing with lifted masses of
enormous mountain, we shall still find him as cautious in his use of
violent slopes or vertical lines, and still as studied in his expression
of retiring surface. We never get to the top of one of his hills without
being tired with our walk; not by the steepness, observe, but by the
stretch; for we are carried up towards the heaven by such delicate
gradation of line, that we scarcely feel that we have left the earth
before we find ourselves among the clouds. The Skiddaw, in the
illustrations to Scott, is a noble instance of this majestic moderation.
The mountain lies in the morning light, like a level vapor; its gentle
lines of ascent are scarcely felt by the eye; it rises without effort or
exertion, by the mightiness of its mass; every slope is full of slumber;
and we know not how it has been exalted, until we find it laid as a
floor for the walking of the eastern clouds. So again in the Fort
Augustus, where the whole elevation of the hills depends on the soft
lines of swelling surface which undulate back through leagues of mist
carrying us unawares higher and higher above the diminished lake, until,
when we are all but exhausted with the endless distance, the mountains
make their last spring, and bear us, in that instant of exertion, half
way to heaven.
Sec. 24. The peculiar difficulty of investigating the more essential truths
of hill outline.
I ought perhaps rather to have selected, as instances of mountain form,
such elaborate works as the Oberwesel or Lake of Uri, but I have before
expressed my dislike of speaking of such magnificent pictures as these
by parts. And indeed all proper consideration of the hill drawing of
Turner must be deferred until we are capable of testing it by the
principles of beauty; for, after all, the most essential qualities of
line,--those on which all right delineation of mountain character must
depend, are those which are only to be explained or illustrated by
appeals to our feeling of what is beautiful. There is an expression and
a feeling about all the hill lines of nature, which I think I shall be
able, hereafter, to explain; but it is not to be reduced to line and
rule--not to be measured by angles or described by compasses--not to be
chipped out by the geologist, or equated by the mathematician. It is
intangible, incalculable--a thing to be felt, not understood--to be
loved, not comprehended--a music of the eyes, a melody of the heart,
whose truth is known only by its sweetness.
Sec. 25. Works of other modern artists. Clarkson Stanfield.
Sec. 26. Importance of particular and individual truth in hill drawing.
I can scarcely, without repeating myself to tediousness, enter at
present into proper consideration of the mountain drawing of other
modern painters. We have, fortunately, several by whom the noble truths
which we have seen so fully exemplified by Turner are also deeply felt
and faithfully rendered; though there is a necessity, for the perfect
statement of them, of such an unison of freedom of thought with perfect
mastery over the greatest mechanical difficulties, as we can scarcely
hope to see attained by more than one man in our age. Very nearly the
same words which we used in reference to Stanfield's drawings of the
central clouds, might be applied to his rendering of mountain truth. He
occupies exactly the same position with respect to other artists in
earth as in cloud. None can be said really to _draw_ the mountain as he
will, to have so perfect a mastery over its organic development; but
there is, nevertheless, in all his works, some want of feeling and
individuality. He has studied and mastered his subject to the bottom,
but he trusts too much to that past study, and rather invents his hills
from his possessed stores of knowledge, than expresses in them the fresh
ideas received from nature. Hence, in all that he does, we feel a little
too much that the hills are his own. We cannot swear to their being the
particular crags and individual promontories which break the cone of
Ischia, or shadow the waves of Maggiore. We are nearly sure, on the
contrary, that nothing but the outline is local, and that all the
filling up has been done in the study. Now, we have already shown (Sect.
I. Chap. III.) that particular truths are more important than general
ones, and this is just one of the cases in which that rule especially
applies. Nothing is so great a sign of truth and beauty in mountain
drawing as the appearance of individuality--nothing is so great a proof
of real imagination and invention, as the appearance that nothing has
been imagined or invented. We ought to feel of every inch of mountain,
that it _must_ have existence in reality, that if we had lived near the
place we should have known every crag of it, and that there must be
people to whom every crevice and shadow of the picture is fraught with
recollections, and colored with associations. The moment the artist can
make us feel this--the moment he can make us think that _he_ has done
nothing, that nature has done all--that moment he becomes ennobled, he
proves himself great. As long as we remember him, we cannot respect him.
We honor him most when we most forget him. He becomes great when he
becomes invisible. And we may, perhaps, be permitted to express our hope
that Mr. Stanfield will--our conviction that he must--if he would
advance in his rank as an artist, attend more to local character, and
give us generally less of the Stanfield limestone. He ought to study
with greater attention the rocks which afford finer divisions and more
delicate parts (slates and gneiss;) and he ought to observe more fondly
and faithfully those beautiful laws and lines of swell and curvature, by
intervals of which nature sets off and relieves the energy of her peaked
outlines. He is at present apt to be too rugged, and, in consequence, to
lose size. Of his best manner of drawing hills, I believe I can scarcely
give a better example than the rocks of Suli, engraved in Finden's
illustrations to Byron. It is very grand and perfect in all parts and
points.
Sec. 27. Works of Copley Fielding. His hill feeling.
Copley Fielding is peculiarly graceful and affectionate in his drawing
of the inferior mountains. But as with his clouds so with his hills; as
long as he keeps to silvery films of misty outline, or purple shadows
mingled with the evening light, he is true and beautiful; but the moment
he withdraws the mass out of its veiling mystery, he is lost. His worst
drawings, therefore, are those on which he has spent most time; for he
is sure to show weakness wherever he gives detail. We believe that all
his errors proceed, as we observed before, from his not working with the
chalk or pencil; and that if he would paint half the number of pictures
in the year which he usually produces, and spend his spare time in hard
dry study of forms, the half he painted would be soon worth double the
present value of all. For he really has deep and genuine feeling of hill
character--a far higher perception of space, elevation, incorporeal
color, and all those qualities which are the poetry of mountains, than
any other of our water-color painters; and it is an infinite pity that
he should not give to these delicate feelings the power of realization,
which might be attained by a little labor. A few thorough studies of his
favorite mountains, Ben-Venue or Ben-Cruachan, in clear, strong, front
chiaroscuro, allowing himself neither color nor mist, nor any means of
getting over the ground but downright drawing, would, we think, open his
eyes to sources of beauty of which he now takes no cognizance. He ought
not, however, to repeat the same subjects so frequently, as the casting
about of the mind for means of varying them blunts the feelings to
truth. And he should remember that an artist, who is not making
progress, is nearly certain to be retrograding; and that progress is not
to be made by working in the study, or by mere labor bestowed on the
repetition of unchanging conceptions.
Sec. 28. Works of J. D. Harding and others.
J. D. Harding would paint mountains very nobly, if he made them of more
importance in his compositions, but they are usually little more than
backgrounds for his foliage or buildings; and it is his present system
to make his backgrounds very slight. His color is very beautiful:
indeed, both his and Fielding's are far more refined than Stanfield's.
We wish he would oftener take up some wild subject dependent for
interest on its mountain forms alone, as we should anticipate the
highest results from his perfect drawing; and we think that such an
exercise, occasionally gone completely through, would counteract a
tendency which we perceive in his present distances, to become a little
thin and cutting, if not incomplete.
The late G. Robson was a man most thoroughly acquainted with all the
characteristics of our own island hills; and some of the outlines of
John Varley showed very grand feeling of energy of form.
FOOTNOTES
[56] I have above exhausted all terms of vituperation, and probably
disgusted the reader; and yet I have not spoken with enough
severity: I know not any terms of blame that are bitter enough to
chastise justly the mountain drawings of Salvator in the pictures of
the Pitti Palace.
[57] Some terrific cuts and chasms of this kind occur on the north
side of the Valais, from Sion to Briey. The torrent from the great
Aletsch glacier descends through one of them. Elsewhere chasms may
be found as narrow, but few so narrow and deep.
CHAPTER IV.
OF THE FOREGROUND.
We have now only to observe the close characteristics of the rocks and
soils to which the large masses of which we have been speaking, owe
their ultimate characters.
Sec. 1. What rocks were the chief components of ancient landscape
foreground.
We have already seen that there exists a marked distinction between
those stratified rocks whose beds are amorphous and without subdivision,
as many limestones and sandstones, and those which are divided by lines
of lamination, as all slates. The last kind of rock is the more frequent
in nature, and forms the greater part of all hill scenery; it has,
however, been successfully grappled with by few, even of the moderns,
except Turner; while there is no single example of any aim at it or
thought of it among the ancients, whose foregrounds, as far as it is
possible to guess at their intention through their concentrated errors,
are chosen from among the tufa and travertin of the lower Apennines,
(the ugliest as well as the least characteristic rocks of nature,) and
whose larger features of rock scenery, if we look at them with a
predetermination to find in them a resemblance of _something_, may be
pronounced at least liker the mountain limestone than anything else. I
shall glance, therefore, at the general characters of these materials
first, in order that we may be able to appreciate the fidelity of
rock-drawing on which Salvator's reputation has been built.
Sec. 2. Salvator's limestones. The real characters of the rock. Its
fractures and obtuseness of angles.
The massive limestones separate generally into irregular blocks, tending
to the form of cubes or parallelopipeds, and terminated by tolerably
smooth planes. The weather, acting on the edges of these blocks, rounds
them off; but the frost, which, while it cannot penetrate nor split the
body of the stone, acts energetically on the angles, splits off the
rounded fragments, and supplies sharp, fresh, and complicated edges.
Hence the angles of such blocks are usually marked by a series of steps
and fractures, in which the peculiar character of the rock is most
distinctly seen; the effect being increased in many limestones by the
interposition of two or three thinner beds between the large strata of
which the block has been a part; these thin laminae breaking easily, and
supplying a number of fissures and lines at the edge of the detached
mass. Thus, as a general principle, if a rock have character anywhere,
it will be on the angle, and however even and smooth its great planes
may be, it will usually break into variety where it turns a corner. In
one of the most exquisite pieces of rock truth ever put on canvas, the
foreground of the Napoleon in the Academy, 1842, this principle was
beautifully exemplified in the complicated fractures of the upper angle
just where it turned from the light, while the planes of the rock were
varied only by the modulation they owed to the waves. It follows from
this structure that the edges of all rock being partially truncated,
first by large fractures, and then by the rounding of the fine edges of
these by the weather, perpetually present _convex_ transitions from the
light to the dark side, the planes of the rock almost always swelling a
little _from_ the angle.
Sec. 3. Salvator's acute angles caused by the meeting of concave curves.
Now it will be found throughout the works of Salvator, that his most
usual practice was to give a _concave_ sweep of the brush for his first
expression of the dark side, leaving the paint darkest towards the
light; by which daring and original method of procedure he has succeeded
in covering his foregrounds with forms which approximate to those of
drapery, of ribbons, of crushed cocked hats, of locks of hair, of waves,
leaves, or anything, in short, flexible or tough, but which of course
are not only unlike, but directly contrary to the forms which nature has
impressed on rocks.[58]
Sec. 4. Peculiar distinctness of light and shade in the rocks of nature.
Sec. 5. Peculiar confusion of both in the rocks of Salvator.
And the circular and sweeping strokes or stains which are dashed at
random over their surfaces, only fail of destroying all resemblance
whatever to rock structure from their frequent want of any meaning at
all, and from the impossibility of our supposing any of them to be
representative of shade. Now, if there be any part of landscape in which
nature develops her principles of light and shade more clearly than
another, it is rock; for the dark sides of fractured stone receive
brilliant reflexes from the lighted surfaces, on which the shadows are
marked with the most exquisite precision, especially because, owing to
the parallelism of cleavage, the surfaces lie usually in directions
nearly parallel. Hence every crack and fissure has its shadow and
reflected light separated with the most delicious distinctness, and the
organization and solid form of all parts are told with a decision of
language, which, to be followed with anything like fidelity, requires
the most transparent color, and the most delicate and scientific
drawing. So far are the works of the old landscape-painters from
rendering this, that it is exceedingly rare to find a single passage in
which the shadow can even be distinguished from the dark side--they
scarcely seem to know the one to be darker than the other; and the
strokes of the brush are not used to explain or express a form known or
conceived, but are dashed and daubed about without any aim beyond the
covering of the canvas. "A rock," the old masters appear to say to
themselves, "is a great irregular, formless, characterless lump; but it
must have shade upon it, and any gray marks will do for that shade."
Sec. 6. And total want of any expression of hardness or brittleness.
Sec. 7. Instances in particular pictures.
Finally, while few, if any, of the rocks of nature are untraversed by
delicate and slender fissures, whose black sharp lines are the only
means by which the peculiar quality in which rocks most differ from the
other objects of the landscape, brittleness, can be effectually
suggested, we look in vain among the blots and stains with which the
rocks of ancient art are loaded, for any vestige or appearance of
fissure or splintering. Toughness and malleability appear to be the
qualities whose expression is most aimed at; sometimes sponginess,
softness, flexibility, tenuity, and occasionally transparency. Take, for
instance, the foreground of Salvator, in No. 220 of the Dulwich Gallery.
There is, on the right-hand side of it, an object, which I never walk
through the room without contemplating for a minute or two with renewed
solicitude and anxiety of mind, indulging in a series of very wild and
imaginative conjectures as to its probable or possible meaning. I think
there is reason to suppose that the artist intended it either for a very
large stone, or for the trunk of a tree; but any decision as to its
being either one or the other of these must, I conceive, be the extreme
of rashness. It melts into the ground on one side, and might reasonably
be conjectured to form a part of it, having no trace of woody structure
or color; but on the other side it presents a series of concave curves,
interrupted by cogs like those of a water-wheel, which the boldest
theorist would certainly not feel himself warranted in supposing
symbolical of rock. The forms which this substance, whatever it be,
assumes, will be found repeated, though in a less degree, in the
foreground of No. 159, where they are evidently meant for rock.
Sec. 8. Compared with the works of Stanfield.
Sec. 9. Their absolute opposition in every particular.
Let us contrast with this system of rock-drawing, the faithful,
scientific, and dexterous studies of nature which we find in the works
of Clarkson Stanfield. He is a man especially to be opposed to the old
masters, because he usually confines himself to the same rock subjects
as they--the mouldering and furrowed crags of the secondary formation
which arrange themselves more or less into broad and simple masses; and
in the rendering of these it is impossible to go beyond him. Nothing can
surpass his care, his firmness, or his success, in marking the distinct
and sharp light and shade by which the form is explained, never
confusing it with local color, however richly his surface-texture may be
given; while the wonderful play of line with which he will vary, and
through which he will indicate, the regularity of stratification, is
almost as instructive as that of nature herself. I cannot point to any
of his works as better or more characteristic than others; but his
Ischia, in the present British Institution, may be taken as a fair
average example. The Botallack Mine, Cornwall, engraved in the Coast
Scenery, gives us a very finished and generic representation of rock,
whose primal organization has been violently affected by external
influences. We have the stratification and cleavage indicated at its
base, every fissure being sharp, angular, and decisive, disguised
gradually as it rises by the rounding of the surface and the successive
furrows caused by the descent of streams. But the exquisite drawing of
the foreground is especially worthy of notice. No huge concave sweeps of
the brush, no daubing or splashing here. Every inch of it is brittle and
splintery, and the fissures are explained to the eye by the most
perfect, speaking light and shade,--we can stumble over the edges of
them. The East Cliff, Hastings, is another very fine example, from the
exquisite irregularity with which its squareness of general structure is
varied and disguised. Observe how totally contrary every one of its
lines is to the absurdities of Salvator. Stanfield's are all angular and
straight, every apparent curve made up of right lines, while Salvator's
are all sweeping and flourishing like so much penmanship. Stanfield's
lines pass away into delicate splintery fissures. Salvator's are broad
daubs throughout. Not one of Stanfield's lines is like another. Every
one of Salvator's mocks all the rest. All Stanfield's curves, where his
universal angular character is massed, as on the left-hand side, into
large sweeping forms, are convex. Salvator's are every one concave.
Sec. 10. The rocks of J. D. Harding.
The foregrounds of J. D. Harding and rocks of his middle distances are
also thoroughly admirable. He is not quite so various and undulating in
his line as Stanfield, and sometimes, in his middle distances, is
wanting in solidity, owing to a little confusion of the dark side and
shadow with each other, or with the local color. But his work, in near
passages of fresh-broken, sharp-edged rock, is absolute perfection,
excelling Stanfield in the perfect freedom and facility with which his
fragments are splintered and scattered; true in every line without the
least apparent effort. Stanfield's best works are laborious, but
Harding's rocks fall from under his hand as if they had just crashed
down the hill-side, flying on the instant into lovely form. In color
also he incomparably surpasses Stanfield, who is apt to verge upon mud,
or be cold in his gray. The rich, lichenous, and changeful warmth, and
delicate weathered grays of Harding's rock, illustrated as they are by
the most fearless, firm, and unerring drawing, render his wild pieces of
torrent shore the finest things, next to the work of Turner, in English
foreground art.
J. B. Pyne has very accurate knowledge of limestone rock, and expresses
it clearly and forcibly; but it is much to be regretted that this clever
artist appears to be losing all sense of color and is getting more and
more mannered in execution, evidently never studying from nature except
with the previous determination to Pynize everything.[59]
Sec. 11. Characters of loose earth and soil.
Sec. 12. Its exceeding grace and fulness of feature.
Before passing to Turner, let us take one more glance at the foregrounds
of the old masters, with reference, not to their management of rock,
which is comparatively a rare component part of their foregrounds, but
to the common soil which they were obliged to paint constantly, and
whose forms and appearances are the same all over the world. A steep
bank of loose earth of any kind, that has been at all exposed to the
weather, contains in it, though it may not be three feet high, features
capable of giving high gratification to a careful observer. It is almost
a fac-simile of a mountain slope of soft and decomposing rock; it
possesses nearly as much variety of character, and is governed by laws
of organization no less rigid. It is furrowed in the first place by
undulating lines, by the descent of the rain, little ravines, which are
cut precisely at the same slope as those of the mountain, and leave
ridges scarcely less graceful in their contour, and beautifully sharp in
their chiselling. Where a harder knot of ground or a stone occurs, the
earth is washed from beneath it, and accumulates above it, and there we
have a little precipice connected by a sweeping curve at its summit with
the great slope, and casting a sharp dark shadow; where the soil has
been soft, it will probably be washed away underneath until it gives
way, and leaves a jagged, hanging, irregular line of fracture; and all
these circumstances are explained to the eye in sunshine with the most
delicious clearness; every touch of shadow being expressive of some
particular truth of structure, and bearing witness to the symmetry into
which the whole mass has been reduced. Where this operation has gone on
long, and vegetation has assisted in softening the outlines, we have our
ground brought into graceful and irregular curves, of infinite variety,
but yet always so connected with each other, and guiding to each other,
that the eye never feels them as _separate_ things, nor feels inclined
to count them, nor perceives a likeness in one to the other; they are
not repetitions of each other, but are different parts of one system.
Each would be imperfect without the one next to it.
Sec. 13. The ground of Teniers.
Now it is all but impossible to express distinctly the particulars
wherein this fine character of curve consists, and to show in definite
examples, what it is which makes one representation right, and another
wrong. The ground of Teniers for instance, in No. 139 in the Dulwich
Gallery, is an example of all that is wrong. It is a representation of
the forms of shaken and disturbed soil, such as we should see here and
there after an earthquake, or over the ruins of fallen buildings. It has
not one contour nor character of the soil of nature, and yet I can
scarcely tell you why, except that the curves repeat one another, and
are monotonous in their flow, and are unbroken by the delicate angle
and momentary pause with which the feeling of nature would have touched
them, and are disunited; so that the eye leaps from this to that, and
does not pass from one to the other without being able to stop, drawn on
by the continuity of line; neither is there any undulation or furrowing
of watermark, nor in one spot or atom of the whole surface, is there
distinct explanation of form to the eye by means of a determined shadow.
All is mere sweeping of the brush over the surface with various ground
colors, without a single indication of character by means of real shade.
Sec. 14. Importance of these minor parts and points.
Sec. 15. The observance of them is the real distinction between the master
and the novice.
Let not these points be deemed unimportant; the truths of form in common
ground are quite as valuable, (let me anticipate myself for a moment,)
quite as beautiful, as any others which nature presents, and in lowland
landscape they present us with a species of line which it is quite
impossible to obtain in any other way,--the alternately flowing and
broken line of mountain scenery, which, however small its scale, is
always of inestimable value, contrasted with the repetitions of organic
form which we are compelled to give in vegetation. A really great artist
dwells on every inch of exposed soil with care and delight, and renders
it one of the most essential, speaking and pleasurable parts of his
composition. And be it remembered, that the man who, in the most
conspicuous part of his foreground, will violate truth with every stroke
of the pencil, is not likely to be more careful in other parts of it;
and that in the little bits which I fix upon for animadversion, I am not
pointing out solitary faults, but only the most characteristic examples
of the falsehood which is everywhere, and which renders the whole
foreground one mass of contradictions and absurdities. Nor do I myself
see wherein the great difference lies between a master and a novice,
except in the rendering of the finer truths, of which I am at present
speaking. To handle the brush freely, and to paint grass and weeds with
accuracy enough to satisfy the eye, are accomplishments which a year or
two's practice will give any man; but to trace among the grass and weeds
those mysteries of invention and combination, by which nature appeals to
the intellect--to render the delicate fissure, and descending curve, and
undulating shadow of the mouldering soil, with gentle and fine finger,
like the touch of the rain itself--to find even in all that appears most
trifling or contemptible, fresh evidence of the constant working of the
Divine power "for glory and for beauty," and to teach it and proclaim it
to the unthinking and the unregardless--this, as it is the peculiar
province and faculty of the master-mind, so it is the peculiar duty
which is demanded of it by the Deity.
Sec. 16. The ground of Cuyp.
Sec. 17. And of Claude.
Sec. 18. The entire weakness and childishness of the latter.
Sec. 19. Compared with the work of Turner.
It would take me no reasonable nor endurable time, if I were to point
out one half of the various kinds and classes of falsehood which the
inventive faculties of the old masters succeeded in originating, in the
drawing of foregrounds. It is not this man, nor that man, nor one school
nor another; all agree in entire repudiation of everything resembling
facts, and in the high degree of absurdity of what they substitute for
them. Even Cuyp, who evidently saw and studied _near_ nature, as an
artist should do--not fishing for idealities, but taking what nature
gave him, and thanking her for it--even he appears to have supposed that
the drawing of the earth might be trusted to chance or imagination, and,
in consequence, strews his banks with lumps of dough, instead of stones.
Perhaps, however, the "beautiful foregrounds" of Claude afford the most
remarkable instances of childishness and incompetence of all. That of
his morning landscape, with the large group of trees and high
single-arched bridge, in the National Gallery, is a pretty fair example
of the kind of error which he constantly falls into. I will not say
anything of the agreeable composition of the three banks, rising one
behind another from the water. I merely affirm that it amounts to a
demonstration that all three were painted in the artist's study, without
any reference to nature whatever. In fact, there is quite enough
intrinsic evidence in each of them to prove this, seeing that what
appears to be meant for vegetation upon them, amounts to nothing more
than a green stain on their surfaces, the more evidently false because
the leaves of the trees twenty yards farther off are all perfectly
visible and distinct; and that the sharp lines with which each cuts
against that beyond it, are not only such as crumbling earth could never
show or assume, but are maintained through their whole progress
ungraduated, unchanging, and unaffected by any of the circumstances of
varying shade to which every one of nature's lines is inevitably
subjected. In fact, the whole arrangement is the impotent struggle of a
tyro to express, by successive edges, that approach of earth which he
finds himself incapable of expressing by the drawing of the surface.
Claude wished to make you understand that the edge of his pond came
nearer and nearer: he had probably often tried to do this with an
unbroken bank, or a bank only varied by the delicate and harmonized
anatomy of nature; and he had found that owing to his total ignorance of
the laws of perspective, such efforts on his part invariably ended in
his reducing his pond to the form of a round O, and making it look
perpendicular. Much comfort and solace of mind, in such unpleasant
circumstances, may be derived from instantly dividing the obnoxious bank
into a number of successive promontories, and developing their edges
with completeness and intensity. Every school-girl's drawing, as soon as
her mind has arrived at so great a degree of enlightenment as to
perceive that perpendicular water is objectionable, will supply us with
edifying instances of this unfailing resource; and this foreground of
Claude's is only one out of the thousand cases in which he has been
reduced to it. And if it be asked, how the proceeding differs from that
of nature, I have only to point to nature herself, as she is drawn in
the foreground of Turner's Mercury and Argus, a case precisely similar
to Claude's, of earthy crumbling banks cut away by water. It will be
found in this picture (and I am now describing nature's work and
Turner's with the same words) that the whole distance is given by
retirement of solid surface; and that if ever an edge is expressed, it
is only felt for an instant, and then lost again; so that the eye cannot
stop at it and prepare for a long jump to another like it, but is guided
over it, and round it, into the hollow beyond; and thus the whole
receding mass of ground, going back for more than a quarter of a mile,
is made completely _one_--no part of it is separated from the rest for
an instant--it is all united, and its modulations are _members_, not
_divisions_ of its mass. But those modulations are countless--heaving
here, sinking there--now swelling, now mouldering, now blending, now
breaking--giving, in fact, to the foreground of this universal master,
precisely the same qualities which we have before seen in his hills, as
Claude gave to his foreground precisely the same qualities which we had
before found in _his_ hills,--infinite unity in the one case, finite
division in the other.
Sec. 20. General features of Turner's foreground.
Let us, then, having now obtained some insight into the principles of
the old masters in foreground drawing, contrast them throughout with
those of our great modern master. The investigation of the excellence of
Turner's drawing becomes shorter and easier as we proceed, because the
great distinctions between his work and that of other painters are the
same, whatever the object or subject may be; and after once showing the
general characters of the particular specific forms under consideration,
we have only to point, in the works of Turner, to the same principles of
infinity and variety in carrying them out, which we have before insisted
upon with reference to other subjects.
Sec. 21. Geological structure of his rocks in the Fall of the Tees.
Sec. 22. Their convex surfaces and fractured edges.
Sec. 23. And perfect unity.
Sec. 24. Various parts whose history is told us by the details of the
drawing.
The Upper Fall of the Tees, Yorkshire, engraved in the England series,
may be given as a standard example of rock-drawing to be opposed to the
work of Salvator. We have, in the great face of rock which divides the
two streams, horizontal lines which indicate the real direction of the
strata, and these same lines are given in ascending perspective all
along the precipice on the right. But we see also on the central
precipice fissures absolutely vertical, which inform us of one series of
joints dividing these horizontal strata; and the exceeding smoothness
and evenness of the precipice itself inform us that it has been caused
by a great separation of substance in the direction of another more
important line of joints, running in a direction across the river.
Accordingly, we see on the left that the whole summit of the precipice
is divided again and again by this great series of joints into vertical
beds, which lie against each other with their sides towards us, and are
traversed downwards by the same vertical lines traceable on the face of
the central cliff. Now, let me direct especial attention to the way in
which Turner has marked over this general and grand unity of structure,
the modifying effects of the weather and the torrent. Observe how the
whole surface of the hill above the precipice on the left[60] is
brought into one smooth, unbroken curvature of gentle convexity, until
it comes to the edge of the precipice, and then, just on the angle,
(compare Sec. 2,) breaks into the multiplicity of fissure which marks its
geological structure. Observe how every one of the separate blocks, into
which it divides, is rounded and convex in its salient edges turned to
the weather, and how every one of their inward angles is marked clear
and sharp by the determined shadow and transparent reflex. Observe how
exquisitely graceful are all the curves of the convex surfaces,
indicating that every one of them has been modelled by the winding and
undulating of running water; and how gradually they become steeper as
they descend, until they are torn down into the face of the precipice.
Finally, observe the exquisite variety of all the touches which express
fissure or shade; every one in varying directions and with new forms,
and yet throughout indicating that perfect parallelism which at once
explained to us the geology of the rock, and falling into one grand
mass, treated with the same simplicity of light and shade which a great
portrait painter adopts in treating the features of the human face;
which, though each has its own separate chiaroscuro, never disturb the
wholeness and grandeur of the head, considered as one ball or mass. So
here, one deep and marked piece of shadow indicates the greatest
proximity of the rounded mass; and from this every shade becomes fainter
and fainter, until all are lost in the obscurity and dimness of the
hanging precipice and the shattering fall. Again, see how the same
fractures just upon the edge take place with the central cliff above the
right-hand fall, and how the force of the water is told us by the
confusion of debris accumulated in its channel. In fact, the great
quality about Turner's drawings which more especially proves their
transcendent truth, is the capability they afford us of reasoning on
past and future phenomena, just as if we had the actual rocks before us;
for this indicates not that one truth is given, nor another, not that a
pretty or interesting morsel has been selected here and there, but that
the whole truth has been given, with all the relations of its parts; so
that we can pick and choose our points of pleasure or of thought for
ourselves, and reason upon the whole with the same certainty which we
should after having climbed and hammered over the rocks bit by bit. With
this drawing before him, a geologist could give a lecture upon the whole
system of aqueous erosion, and speculate as safely upon the past and
future states of this very spot, as if he were standing and getting wet
with the spray. He would tell you, at once, that the waterfall was in a
state of rapid recession; that it had once formed a wide cataract just
at the spot where the figure is sitting on the heap of debris; and that
when it was there, part of it came down by the channel on the left, its
bed being still marked by the delicately chiselled lines of fissure. He
would tell you that the foreground had also once been the top of the
fall, and that the vertical fissures on the right of it were evidently
then the channel of a side stream. He would tell you that the fall was
then much lower than it is now, and that being lower, it had less force,
and cut itself a narrower bed; and that the spot where it reached the
higher precipice is marked by the expansion of the wide basin which its
increased violence has excavated, and by the gradually increasing
concavity of the rocks below, which we see have been hollowed into a
complete vault by the elastic bound of the water. But neither he nor I
could tell you with what exquisite and finished marking of every
fragment and particle of soil or rock, both in its own structure and the
evidence it bears of these great influences, the whole of this is
confirmed and carried out.
Sec. 25. Beautiful instance of an exception to general rules in the
Llanthony.
With this inimitable drawing we may compare the rocks in the foreground
of the Llanthony. These latter are not divided by joints, but into thin
horizontal and united beds, which the torrent in its times of flood has
chiselled away, leaving one exposed under another, with the sweeping
marks of its eddies upon their edges. And here we have an instance of an
exception to a general rule, occasioned by particular and local action.
We have seen that the action of water over any surface _universally_,
whether falling, as in rain, or sweeping, as a torrent, induces
convexity of form. But when we have rocks _in situ_, as here, exposed at
their edges to the violent action of an eddy, that eddy will cut a vault
or circular space for itself, (as we saw on a large scale with the high
waterfall,) and we have a concave curve interrupting the general
contours of the rock. And thus Turner (while every edge of his masses is
rounded, and, the moment we rise above the level of the water, all is
convex) has interrupted the great contours of his strata with concave
curves, precisely where the last waves of the torrent have swept against
the exposed edges of the beds. Nothing could more strikingly prove the
depth of that knowledge by which every touch of this consummate artist
is regulated, that universal command of subject which never acts for a
moment on anything conventional or habitual, but fills every corner and
space with new evidence of knowledge, and fresh manifestation of
thought.
Sec. 26. Turner's drawing of detached blocks of weathered stone.
The Lower Fall of the Tees, with the chain-bridge, might serve us for an
illustration of all the properties and forms of vertical beds of rock,
as the upper fall has of horizontal; but we pass rather to observe, in
detached pieces of foreground, the particular modulation of parts which
cannot be investigated in the grand combinations of general mass.
The blocks of stone which form the foreground of the Ulleswater are, I
believe, the finest example in the world of the finished drawing of
rocks which have been subjected to violent aqueous action. Their
surfaces seem to palpitate from the fine touch of the waves, and every
part of them is rising or falling in soft swell or gentle depression,
though the eye can scarcely trace the fine shadows on which this
chiselling of the surface depends. And with all this, every block of
them has individual character, dependent on the expression of the
angular lines of which its contours were first formed, and which is
retained and felt through all the modulation and melting of the
water-worn surface. And what is done here in the most important part of
the picture, to be especially attractive to the eye, is often done by
Turner with lavish and overwhelming power, in the accumulated debris of
a wide foreground, strewed with the ruin of ages, as, for instance, in
the Junction of the Greta and Tees, where he has choked the torrent bed
with a mass of shattered rock, thrown down with the profusion and
carelessness of nature herself; and yet every separate block is a study,
(and has evidently been drawn from nature,) chiselled and varied in its
parts, as if it were to be the chief member of a separate subject; yet
without ever losing, in a single instance, its subordinate position, or
occasioning, throughout the whole accumulated multitude, the repetition
of a single line.
Sec. 27. And of complicated foreground.
I consider cases like these, of perfect finish and new conception,
applied and exerted in the drawing of every member of a confused and
almost countlessly-divided system, about the most wonderful, as well as
the most characteristic passages of Turner's foregrounds. It is done not
less marvellously, though less distinctly, in the individual parts of
all his broken ground, as in examples like these of separate blocks. The
articulation of such a passage as the nearest bank, in the picture we
have already spoken of at so great length, the Upper Fall of the Tees,
might serve us for a day's study, if we were to go into it part by part;
but it is impossible to do this, except with the pencil; we can only
repeat the same general observations, about eternal change and unbroken
unity, and tell you to observe how the eye is kept throughout on solid
and retiring surfaces, instead of being thrown, as by Claude, on flat
and equal edges. You cannot find a single edge in Turner's work; you are
everywhere kept upon round surfaces, and you go back on these you cannot
tell how--never taking a leap, but progressing imperceptibly along the
unbroken bank, till you find yourself a quarter of a mile into the
picture, beside the figure at the bottom of the waterfall.
Sec. 28. And of loose soil.
Finally, the bank of earth on the right of the grand drawing of Penmaen
Mawr, may be taken as the standard of the representation of soft soil
modelled by descending rain; and may serve to show us how exquisite in
character are the resultant lines, and how full of every species of
attractive and even sublime quality, if we only are wise enough not to
scorn the study of them. The higher the mind, it may be taken as a
universal rule, the less it will scorn that which appears to be small or
unimportant; and the rank of a painter may always be determined by
observing how he uses, and with what respect he views the minutiae of
nature. Greatness of mind is not shown by admitting small things, but by
making small things great under its influence. He who can take no
interest in what is small, will take false interest in what is great;
he who cannot make a bank sublime, will make a mountain ridiculous.
Sec. 29. The unison of all in the ideal foregrounds of the Academy
pictures.
Sec. 30. And the great lesson to be received from all.
It is not until we have made ourselves acquainted with these simple
facts of form, as they are illustrated by the slighter works of Turner,
that we can become at all competent to enjoy the combination of all, in
such works as the Mercury and Argus, or Bay of Baiae, in which the mind
is at first bewildered by the abundant outpouring of the master's
knowledge. Often as I have paused before these noble works, I never felt
on returning to them as if I had ever seen them before; for their
abundance is so deep and various that the mind, according to its own
temper at the time of seeing, perceives some new series of truths
rendered in them, just as it would on revisiting a natural scene; and
detects new relations and associations of these truths which set the
whole picture in a different light at every return to it. And this
effect is especially caused by the management of the foreground; for the
more marked objects of the picture may be taken one by one, and thus
examined and known; but the foregrounds of Turner are so united in all
their parts that the eye cannot take them by divisions, but is guided
from stone to stone, and bank to bank, discovering truths totally
different in aspect, according to the direction in which it approaches
them, and approaching them in a different direction, and viewing them as
a part of a new system, every time that it begins its course at a new
point. One lesson, however, we are invariably taught by all, however
approached or viewed,--that the work of the Great Spirit of nature is as
deep and unapproachable in the lowest as in the noblest objects,--that
the Divine mind is as visible in its full energy of operation on every
lowly bank and mouldering stone, as in the lifting of the pillars of
heaven, and settling the foundation of the earth; and that to the
rightly perceiving mind, there is the same infinity, the same majesty,
the same power, the same unity, and the same perfection, manifest in the
casting of the clay as in the scattering of the cloud, in the mouldering
of the dust as in the kindling of the day-star.
FOOTNOTES
[58] I have cut out a passage in this place which insisted on the
_angular_ character of rocks,--not because it was false, but because
it was incomplete, and I cannot explain it nor complete it without
example. It is not the absence of curves, but the suggestion of
_hardness through_ curves, and of the under tendencies of the inward
structure, which form the true characteristics of rock form; and
Salvator, whom neither here nor elsewhere I have abused enough, is
not wrong because he paints curved rocks, but because his curves are
the curves of ribbons and not of rocks; and the difference between
rock curvature and other curvature I cannot explain verbally, but I
hope to do it hereafter by illustration; and, at present, let the
reader study the rock-drawing of the Mont St. Gothard subject, in
the Liber Studiorum, and compare it with any examples of Salvator to
which he may happen to have access. All the account of rocks here
given is altogether inadequate, and I only do not alter it because I
first wish to give longer study to the subject.
[59] A passage which I happened to see in an Essay of Mr. Pyne's, in
the Art-Union, about nature's "foisting rubbish" upon the artist,
sufficiently explains the cause of this decline. If Mr. Pyne will go
to nature, as all great men have done, and as all men who mean to be
great must do, that is not merely to be _helped_, but to be _taught_
by her; and will once or twice take her gifts, without looking them
in the mouth, he will most assuredly find--and I say this in no
unkind or depreciatory feeling, for I should say the same of all
artists who are in the habit of only sketching nature, and not
studying her--that _her_ worst is better than _his_ best. I am quite
sure that if Mr. Pyne, or any other painter who has hitherto been
very careful in his choice of subject, will go into the next
turnpike-road, and taking the first four trees that he comes to in
the hedge, give them a day each, drawing them leaf for leaf, as far
as may be, and even their smallest boughs with as much care as if
they were rivers, or an important map of a newly-surveyed country,
he will find, when he has brought them all home, that at least three
out of the four are better than the best he ever invented. Compare
Part III. Sect. I. Chap. III. Sec. 12, 13, (the reference in the note
ought to be to Chap. XV. Sec. 7.)
[60] In the light between the waterfall and the large dark mass on
the extreme right.
SECTION V.
OF TRUTH OF WATER.
CHAPTER I.
OF WATER, AS PAINTED BY THE ANCIENTS.
Sec. 1. Sketch of the functions and infinite agency of water.
Of all inorganic substances, acting in their own proper nature, and
without assistance or combination, water is the most wonderful. If we
think of it as the source of all the changefulness and beauty which we
have seen in clouds; then as the instrument by which the earth we have
contemplated was modelled into symmetry, and its crags chiselled into
grace; then as, in the form of snow, it robes the mountains it has made,
with that transcendent light which we could not have conceived if we had
not seen; then as it exists in the form of the torrent--in the iris
which spans it, in the morning mist which rises from it, in the deep
crystalline pools which mirror its hanging shore, in the broad lake and
glancing river; finally, in that which is to all human minds the best
emblem of unwearied, unconquerable power, the wild, various, fantastic,
tameless unity of the sea; what shall we compare to this mighty, this
universal element for glory and for beauty? or how shall we follow its
eternal changefulness of feeling? It is like trying to paint a soul.
Sec. 2. The ease with which a common representation of it may be given. The
impossibility of a faithful one.
To suggest the ordinary appearance of calm water--to lay on canvas as
much evidence of surface and reflection as may make us understand that
water is meant--is, perhaps, the easiest task of art; and even ordinary
running or falling water may be sufficiently rendered, by observing
careful curves of projection with a dark ground, and breaking a little
white over it, as we see done with judgment and truth by Ruysdael. But
to paint the actual play of hue on the reflective surface, or to give
the forms and fury of water when it begins to show itself--to give the
flashing and rocket-like velocity of a noble cataract, or the precision
and grace of the sea waves, so exquisitely modelled, though so mockingly
transient--so mountainous in its form, yet so cloud-like in its
motion--with its variety and delicacy of color, when every ripple and
wreath has some peculiar passage of reflection upon itself alone, and
the radiating and scintillating sunbeams are mixed with the dim hues of
transparent depth and dark rock below;--to do this perfectly, is beyond
the power of man; to do it even partially, has been granted to but one
or two, even of those few who have dared to attempt it.
Sec. 3. Difficulty of properly dividing the subject.
As the general laws which govern the appearances of water have equal
effect on all its forms, it would be injudicious to treat the subject in
divisions; for the same forces which govern the waves and foam of the
torrent, are equally influential on those of the sea; and it will be
more convenient to glance generally at the system of water-painting of
each school and artist, than to devote separate chapters to the
examination of the lake, river, or sea-painting of all. We shall,
therefore, vary our usual plan, and look first at the water-painting of
the ancients; then at that of the moderns generally; lastly, at that of
Turner.
Sec. 4. Inaccuracy of study of water-effect among all painters.
It is necessary in the outset to state briefly one or two of the optical
conditions by which the appearance of the surface of water is affected;
to describe them all would require a separate essay, even if I possessed
the requisite knowledge, which I do not. The accidental modifications
under which general laws come into play are innumerable, and often, in
their extreme complexity, inexplicable, I suppose, even by men of the
most extended optical knowledge. What I shall here state are a few only
of the broadest laws verifiable by the reader's immediate observation,
but of which nevertheless, I have found artists frequently ignorant;
owing to their habit of sketching from nature without thinking or
reasoning, and especially of finishing at home. It is not often, I
believe, that an artist draws the reflections in water as he sees them;
over large spaces, and in weather that is not very calm, it is nearly
impossible to do so; when it is possible, sometimes in haste, and
sometimes in idleness, and sometimes under the idea of improving nature,
they are slurred or misrepresented; it is so easy to give something like
a suggestive resemblance of calm water, that, even when the landscape is
finished from nature, the water is merely indicated as something that
may be done at any time, and then, in the home work, come the cold
leaden grays with some, and the violent blues and greens with others,
and the horizontal lines with the feeble, and the bright touches and
sparkles with the dexterous, and everything that is shallow and
commonplace with all. Now, the fact is, that there is hardly a roadside
pond or pool which has not as much landscape _in_ it as above it. It is
not the brown, muddy, dull thing we suppose it to be; it has a heart
like ourselves, and in the bottom of that there are the boughs of the
tall trees, and the blades of the shaking-grass, and all manner of hues,
of variable, pleasant light out of the sky; nay, the ugly gutter, that
stagnates over the drain bars, in the heart of the foul city, is not
altogether base; down in that, if you will look deep enough, you may see
the dark, serious blue of far-off sky, and the passing of pure clouds.
It is at your own will that you see in that despised stream, either the
refuse of the street, or the image of the sky--so it is with almost all
other things that we unkindly despise. Now, this farseeing is just the
difference between the great and the vulgar painter; the common man
_knows_ the roadside pool is muddy, and draws its mud; the great painter
sees beneath and behind the brown surface what will take him a day's
work to follow, but he follows it, cost what it will. And if painters
would only go out to the nearest common and take the nearest dirty pond
among the furze, and draw that thoroughly, not considering that it is
water that they are drawing, and that water must be done in a certain
way; but drawing determinedly what they _see_, that is to say, all the
trees, and their shaking leaves, and all the hazy passages of disturbing
sunshine; and the bottom seen in the clearer little bits at the edge,
and the stones of it, and all the sky, and the clouds far down in the
middle, drawn as completely, and more delicately they must be, than the
real clouds above, they would come home with such a notion of
water-painting as might save me and every one else all trouble of
writing more about the matter; but now they do nothing of the kind, but
take the ugly, round, yellow surface for granted, or else improve it,
and, instead of giving that refined, complex, delicate, but saddened and
gloomy reflection in the polluted water, they clear it up with coarse
flashes of yellow, and green, and blue, and spoil their own eyes, and
hurt ours; failing, of course, still more hopelessly in touching the
pure, inimitable light of waves thrown loose; and so Canaletto is still
thought to have painted canals, and Vandevelde and Backhuysen to have
painted sea, and the uninterpreted streams and maligned sea hiss shame
upon us from all their rocky beds and hollow shores.
Sec. 5. Difficulty of treating this part of the subject.
I approach this part of my subject with more despondency than any other,
and that for several reasons; first, the water painting of all the elder
landscape painters, excepting a few of the better passages of Claude and
Ruysdael, is so execrable, so beyond all expression and explanation bad;
Claude's and Ruysdael's best so cold and valueless, that I do not know
how to address those who like such painting; I do not know what their
sensations are respecting sea. I can perceive nothing in Vandevelde or
Backhuysen of the lowest redeeming merit; no power, no presence of
intellect--or evidence of perception--of any sort or kind; no
resemblance--even the feeblest--of anything natural; no invention--even
the most sluggish--of anything agreeable. Had they given us staring
green seas with hatchet edges, such as we see Her Majesty's ships
so-and-so fixed into by the heads or sterns in the first room of the
Royal Academy, the admiration of them would have been comprehensible;
there being a natural predilection in the mind of men for green waves
with curling tops, but not for clay and wool; so that though I can
understand, in some sort, why people admire everything else in old art,
why they admire Salvator's rocks, and Claude's foregrounds, and
Hobbima's trees, and Paul Potter's cattle, and Jan Steen's pans; and
while I can perceive in all these likings a root which seems right and
legitimate, and to be appealed to; yet when I find they can even
_endure_ the _sight_ of a Backhuysen on their room walls (I speak
seriously) it makes me hopeless at once. I may be wrong, or they may be
wrong, but at least I can conceive of no principle or opinion common
between us, which either can address or understand in the other; and yet
I am wrong in this want of conception, for I know that Turner once
liked Vandevelde, and I can trace the evil influence of Vandevelde on
most of his early sea painting, but Turner certainly could not have
liked Vandevelde without _some_ legitimate cause. Another discouraging
point is that I cannot catch a wave, nor Daguerreotype it, and so there
is no coming to pure demonstration; but the forms and hues of water must
always be in some measure a matter of dispute and feeling, and the more
so because there is no perfect or even tolerably perfect sea painting to
refer to: the sea never has been, and I fancy never will be nor can be
painted; it is only suggested by means of more or less spiritual and
intelligent conventionalism; and though Turner has done enough to
suggest the sea mightily and gloriously, after all it is by
conventionalism still, and there remains so much that is unlike nature,
that it is always possible for those who do not feel his power to
justify their dislike, on very sufficient and reasonable grounds; and to
maintain themselves obstinately unreceptant of the good, by insisting on
the deficiency which no mortal hand can supply, and which commonly is
most manifest on the one hand, where most has been achieved on the
other.
With calm water the case is different. Facts are ascertainable and
demonstrable there, and by the notice of one or two of the simplest, we
may obtain some notion of the little success and intelligence of the
elder painters in this easier field, and so prove their probable failure
in contending with greater difficulties.
Sec. 6. General laws which regulate the phenomena of water. First, the
imperfection of its reflective surface.
First: Water, of course, owing to its transparency, possesses not a
perfectly reflective surface, like that of speculum metal, but a surface
whose reflective power is dependent on the angle at which the rays to be
reflected fall. The smaller this angle, the greater are the number of
rays reflected. Now, according to the number of rays reflected is the
force of the image of objects above, and according to the number of rays
transmitted is the perceptibility of objects below the water. Hence the
visible transparency and reflective power of water are in inverse ratio.
In looking down into it from above, we receive transmitted rays which
exhibit either the bottom, or the objects floating in the water; or else
if the water be deep and clear, we receive very few rays, and the water
looks black. In looking along water we receive reflected rays, and
therefore the image of objects above it. Hence, in shallow water on a
level shore the bottom is seen at our feet, clearly; it becomes more and
more obscure as it retires, even though the water do not increase in
depth, and at a distance of twelve or twenty yards--more or less
according to our height above the water--becomes entirely invisible,
lost in the lustre of the reflected surface.
Sec. 7. The inherent hue of water modifies dark reflections, and does not
affect bright ones.
Second: The brighter the objects reflected, the larger the angle at
which reflection is visible; it is always to be remembered that,
strictly speaking, only light objects are reflected, and that the darker
ones are seen only in proportion to the number of rays of light that
they can send; so that a dark object comparatively loses its power to
affect the surface of water, and the water in the space of a dark
reflection is seen partially with the image of the object, and partially
transparent. It will be found on observation that under a bank--suppose
with dark trees above showing spaces of bright sky, the bright sky is
reflected distinctly, and the bottom of the water is in those spaces not
seen; but in the dark spaces of reflection we see the bottom of the
water, and the color of that bottom and of the water itself mingles with
and modifies that of the color of the trees casting the dark reflection.
This is one of the most beautiful circumstances connected with water
surface, for by these means a variety of color and a grace and
evanescence are introduced in the reflection otherwise impossible. Of
course at great distances even the darkest objects cast distinct images,
and the hue of the water cannot be seen, but in near water the
occurrence of its own color modifying the dark reflections, while it
leaves light ones unaffected, is of infinite value.
Take, by way of example, an extract from my own diary at Venice.